Poetry Challenge: Tell us how naps restore you

Our poet-in-residence Kwame Alexander is a big fan of the power nap.

Research shows how restorative naps can be. Has it been that way for you? Tell us in the form of a poem.

For inspiration, Alexander cites an excerpt from Margaret Atwood's poem "Variation on the Word Sleep."

"I would like to watch you sleeping

Which may not happen

I would like to watch you

Sleeping. I would like to sleep

With you, to enter

Your sleep as it's smooth dark wave

Slides over my head

And walk with you through that

lucent

Wavering forest of bluegreen leaves

With its watery sun and three moons

Towards the cave where you must descend

Towards your worst fear

I would like to give you the silver

Branch, the small white flower, the

One word that will protect you

From the grief at the center

Of your dream..."

(From Selected Poems II: 1976-1986 by Margaret Atwood. Copyright © 1987 by Margaret Atwood).

While that poem is not exactly about napping, it is about sleeping, love and other things.

It ends with this line: "I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed and that necessary."

Now we welcome your own poems about all things napping—rest, relaxation, rejuvenation, dreams. All of it.

Your poem must start with or incorporate the phrase "I would like to..." That's it.

Share your poem through the form below. Alexander will take lines from some of your pieces and create a community crowdsourced poem. Alexander and NPR's Rachel Martin will read it on air, and NPR will publish it online, where contributors will be credited.

The form closes on Friday, March 10.

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